Watching London’s highest theatre performance at the Shangri-La hotel

Fancy watching Noel Coward 150 metres above the London skyline?

Watch intimate theatre performances 40 floors up (Shangri-La)

Forty floors and hundreds of metres above London Bridge isn’t perhaps the most likely location for a guerrilla theatre performance to take place. (Although just half a mile down the road, almost half a millennium ago, the world’s most well-known playwright was doing it on ground level.)

Nor would you expect to be in a plush hotel suite, where the props are a prim, high-thread-count dressed bed; a 10-seater leather sofa; and a telescope, angled just so to see nighttime London spread out in all its glassy glory.

But here we are. I’m snuggled into said sofa, clutching a glass of champagne, and the show – Noel Coward’s Hands Across The Sea – is about to start.

The performance is part of Theatre In The Clouds, a new partnership between the London Shangri-La hotel, which occupies floors 36 to 51 of western Europe’s most swaggering building, the Shard, and private theatre company Revels In Hand. Shangri-La wanted to put on London’s most vertiginous play in its vast, elegantly designed suites: and so for tonight, the signature 232-square-metre Shangri-La suite has been transformed into the backdrop for a Coward double bill.

A handful of guests, perhaps 12 at most, are clustered on the vast cream sofa, reaching for their glasses of fizz from the stately wood and glass coffee table as the character of Piggie explodes into loud conversation in clipped English tones. It’s a bizarre study in the line between actor and viewer and the intimate and the distant, particularly because the set is framed by clear night skies and dazzling skyscrapers of south London. There’s no fourth wall here.

We’re less than two metres away from the actors, and can see every frown, every line, hear every sniff. The character of Piggie is so shrill I can almost hear her vocal chords vibrating. At one point it’s so excruciatingly awkward it feels as if we’re sitting on the leather daybed with them.

This uncomfortable intimacy is the vibe of Revels In Hand, which launched in summer 2018. It puts on bespoke theatre performances in tight spaces: think living rooms, kitchens, gardens – even yachts. I suppose hotel suites were ripe for the picking, especially one that comes with views as jaw-dropping as the experience itself.

Ways and Means performed in the Shangri-La suite’s bedroom (Tomas Turpie)

After Hands Across The Sea and another champagne break, we move into the suite bedroom for Ways and Means – which is even more intimate, given the two main characters are lying in bed. I have to remember not to keep turning around to look out at the view. It feels like I might get told off.

This immersive style of theatre isn’t a modern one – it’s how performances were staged in Shakespearean times in the nearby Globe Theatre. But a hotel laying on theatre productions for a select few guests? Now that’s new – particularly as the capital’s saturated luxury hotel market fights for dominance.

The Shangri-La’s general manager, Alex Willats, said the hotel was looking for a “unique” experience in “the comfort and elegance of our luxury signature suites”.

“With the performances being performed at 40 floors up coupled with London’s skyline as the backdrop, it literally is theatre in the clouds,” he added.

‘Hands Across The Sea’ on a summer evening (Tomas Turpie)

Aside from this Noel Coward comedy double bill, there are various performances including John Van Druten’s Voice of the Turtle and Bell, Book and Candle. Each performance is around an hour, but the evening lasts a couple more and is a whole production of champagne, canapés and suite-exploring – which is encouraged, given that this set of rooms sells for upward of £10,000 a night.

Back to the fourth wall. At the end of the performance, the actors drop their characters and come to just... hang out. In one evening we’ve gone from guerilla theatre performance to a cosy dinner party 40 floors in the sky – which is a transformation I’ve never witnessed at any other London hotel.

Details

Theatre In The Clouds runs until October. For a full schedule of future performances, click here.

Tickets cost £95 and include two glasses of champagne and canapes.